Today’s post is a guest article from Angela Martin, a freelancer who writes about career topics. Angela’s article offers an interesting analysis of the human experience of “personal branding,” by looking at the experience of workers who were transitioning from life inside a socialist system, into a capitalist one. If you have any comments about Angela’s article , feel free to write to Angela, or post comments to this blog. Thank you Angela!

What We Talk About When We Talk About Personal Branding: The Polish Experience in Transitioning to a Market Economy

Here in America and the rest of the developed, Western world, personal branding as an individual marketing tool has become essentially commonplace. We don’t even question it anymore. We don’t think about its philosophical, psychological, or social ramifications, which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find this blog, one that actually offers an alternative method to successful job seeking.

So what happens when a society that does not even understand the concept of personal branding finds itself suddenly immersed in it? This, I think, is a fascinating question, and one that cultural anthropologist Elizabeth Dunn answers in her book “Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor.” The book chronicles Dunn’s field research in a Gerber baby food plant that was established in Poland shortly after its transition to a market economy from a socialist state.

From her experiences with talking to executives, managers, factory workers, middle men, and workers’ family members, Dunn takes an incredible nosedive straight into the tensions that exist between a capitalist and socialist society. While political ideology is a matter to be left to the politicians, and something I don’t care to discuss,  I find it most interesting that Polish employees who wished to achieve management positions in the company had to completely remake who they saw themselves as people, in order to conform to neoliberal, marketing ideas. They had to find ways to sell themselves, to exhibit what hiring managers called “flexibility.”

In one part of the book, Dunn investigates interviews that American recruiters conducted with Polish job candidates for middle management positions. Dunn explains how the buzzword “flexibility” figured heavily in recruiters’ criteria for hiring. The perfect manager, the Americans surmised, would have little job experience (since experience under the old statist system was a liability), and would demonstrate intangible qualities like “self-confidence,” “sophistication,” and “initiative.”

These qualities all seem like part of the typical, business-speak lexicon to us, but to the newly initiated Polish workforce, these words were a revelation. As a result, during the interview process, these Polish, according to Dunn, “used changes in dress, personal possessions, and personal space to display their supposed transformations from a socialist being…to a capitalist being…By signaling this inner transformation, managers hoped to demonstrate that they had the ‘right attitude’ and were ready and willing to learn new Western management ideas.” (Dunn 71).

More tellingly, sometimes Polish managers misunderstood the image they were supposed to portray, to an extent that is in some way hilarious, but also sad. One Polish manager, in an attempt to impress the higher-ups, hired strippers for a company party, accidentally wore striped ties with checkered suits, and constantly made inappropriate jokes. Eventually he hired a personal stylist from New York City to help him overcome his many faux pas (73).

The rest of Dunn’s book is definitely worth the read, even if only to get a deeper insight into how Western management practices, as well as consumer marketing strategies, had such a surprisingly wide-ranging effect in all aspects of a post-socialist society.

But in terms of current management practices in the Western world, how do we, as people (we are, after all, people before we are anything else, whether we are employees, employers, or consumers) reconcile the rather depersonalizing effects—most dramatically demonstrated in Dunn’s book—of business techniques that we ourselves created? And not only that, but how do we combat these techniques when they are so deeply entrenched in the way things are run?

For starters, Cathy Keates’ blog and book are promising forays into the different ways job seekers can overcome a system that is slightly absurd, while still working within the system. I, for one, believe that sincerity really will get you far, even though there is an expectation that job seekers must proffer some sort of quasi-phony sales pitch.

 And you know why? Hiring managers and recruiters are people, too, and even though they may have set criteria to look for when hiring, communicating your real self will be refreshing. It will establish a connection with a potential employer that no “technique” can. It is my most sincere hope that the future of job search is headed in this direction, if only to extract and expand what little humanity is left in the world of business.

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This guest post is contributed by Angela Martin, who writes on the topics of Career Salaries.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id:  angela.martin77@gmail.com. 

Branding, Criticisms/questions, Job search as sales & marketing Branding, job search

If you are looking for guidance about how to use social networking for your career, you’re sure to find lots of advice about branding yourself. For instance, Brand You, an article in jobpostings, a job search magazine for students and new graduates, is a good example.

While in the past I’ve referred to the pain of branding ourselves in our job searches (branding is for cows isn’t it? And honestly I hate to think of cows being branded! Ouch!),  I just saw a fantastic  new article called Brand You? (see pages 16-17) specifically about branding and social networking.

Interestingly, this recent article was published in the same magazine as the previous Brand You article, but note the new punctuation.

That question mark in the title is important. Brand You? isn’t more promotion for the branding approach, but instead it asks whether, regardless of all the hype about branding,  it is actually useful and healthy to be a brand.

The article points out many interesting concerns about branding – the whiff of manipulation, the trace of insincerity and lack of honesty, and the hint of self-interest over interest in others.

Consider this thought from a digital literacy consultant who is quoted in the article “I think employers are less interested in your personal ‘brand’ … than what kinds of contributions you are making to your field, to others, to the world. What do you bring to an organization besides your carefully constructed self?”

What indeed. It is not our constructed brands that connect us with people and opportunities, it is ourselves – our interests, our questions, our curiosity, our real characters. The “constructed self” can actually get in the way of making a connection with an employer. If they can’t get to the real you behind the brand and access who you really are, it will be difficult for the two of you to form a real connection.

With the constant chatter about personal branding, it can be hard to not jump on the bandwagon and get branded. But some caution may be useful here. Will branding yourself help you to connect with people, or will it get in the way?

I love to see more dialogue and criticism of these sales and branding approaches starting to happen and spread. Brand me? No thanks.

Branding, Criticisms/questions, Job search as sales & marketing, Networking, social networking Branding, job search, social networking

“With competition for good jobs at an all-time high, candidates who conduct their job search as a sales campaign consistently win out over those who don’t.”

So starts an article called “Win Your Next Job With Three Essential Interview Skills.”

Now, if you’ve been reading my blog or book, you can guess my reaction. I don’t agree at all. There is nothing noteworthy about that -  all over the internet there are thousands of articles with similar arguments and content that I disagree with. What makes this one worth notice is this fascinating opening line.

“[C]andidates who conduct their job search as a sales campaign consistently win out over those who don’t” is quite a claim. Bold, assertive – very sales-like?

The biggest problem with this is that this is opinion presented as fact. There is NO evidence that this claim is true. There is no evidence for this provided in the article, and as far I can tell from my research, there is no evidence anywhere. Perhaps anecdotally many people feel that this has been their experience. And certainly there are legions of people who believe this to be true. But to present this as fact should require far more than anecdotal stories and beliefs.

Too often job search “experts” tell us the right way to do things. But a lot of this (if not basically all) is  based on opinion. There is nothing wrong with opinion - we should just be up front about it being opinion and not fact.

I’ll use the same analogy as used in the article in question. When you go to buy a new car, you listen critically to the salesperson’s pitch (and you know it is a pitch, you know they are using “closing techniques” and looking for your “hot buttons”). You try to step back and evaluate if the offer is really as good as it is presented as being. You know the job of the salesperson is to get the sale – which may or may not be in your own best interest. So you question all claims.

Let’s do the same thing when being sold on the “correct” way to job search. Question all claims. Beware of opinion masquerading as fact. 

Thank you to Christine Fader for sending me the link to this article – you were right  Christine– I did enjoy reading it!

Choice, Criticisms/questions, Interviews, Job search as sales & marketing job interviews, job search, job search as sales and marketing, sales

I’ve been writing about networking recently, and will get back to that soon, but want to take a one posting break off that topic. I saw Michael Moore’s new movie “Capitalism: A Love Story” and have found it has stimulated a lot of interesting thoughts related my concerns about how people are commodified as products for sale (in our job searches and beyond).

Spoiler alert – I am going to write about a reaction from something in the movie – if you do not want to hear about it until you’ve seen the movie yourself, please do not read on!

As is clear from the previews etc, this movie is a critical look at how the current economic system in the United States impacts its citizens. In watching the movie, I kept thinking about how people (not just when job searching) can feel like mere commodities. Watching some of the stories Moore tells, it’s no wonder we can feel like products for sale. It’s no wonder so many people feel so disenchanted, not just with job search, but also with work in general. There are so many examples in the movie about how the system  dehumanizes people.

One example – have you ever heard of “dead peasant” insurance? No, I hadn’t either. Apparently many large companies take out life insurance on their staff. This insurance is referred to (privately and not publicly I think) as “dead peasant” insurance. So if that staff member dies, the COMPANY MAKES MONEY off their DEATH. Flabbergasting really. People as commodities? Seems like.

I don’t want to give too much of the movie away, so won’t share a bunch more examples. If you’ve been wondering as I have about how the current system we live in impacts how we feel as humans, I really recommend this movie. You may or may not agree with Moore’s take, style, or stunts, but I’m pretty sure it will give you lots to think about. It certainly energized me to keep trying to stop people from being  “for sale.”

Choice, Criticisms/questions commodification, not for sale, products

“Aren’t your criticisms of the sales mindset for job search really just semantics?” I got this question during a webinar presentation I did last week. And it’s not the first time I’ve been asked this. The rest of the argument is that “it’s really just words - you can change the words but what job seekers need to do doesn’t change - they still need to sell themselves.”

I appreciate the question, because I think it is one that comes up in many people’s minds when trying to decide if we really need to tranform job search from a sales mindset to something more aligned with our integrity and authenticity - is it really worth changing this? Or is it “just semantics“?

My response:

1. There’s no “just semantics.” This phrase “it’s just semantics” is meant to dismiss concerns about language and suggests that words are just words - changing them doesn’t make a big difference. But words are not just words - words communicate meaning and paint a particular picture. The words we choose dictate the concepts, values, and images that we experience. And then those direct our behaviours. When we choose to tell job seekers to “sell themselves” we are placing all the images, concepts and values that are attached in our minds to sales, to those job seekers. And this is problematic (see my previous post about the Used Car Salesman Syndrome for one example of the negative impact of the sales language).

2. I want to change not just our language for job search, but also our behaviours. I do believe it starts with the language - first we replace words such as sales, with other words such as integrity and authenticity. Then, with this different mindset, we feel, think, and act differently. Some of those differences may be subtle, others quite dramatically different. But overall, our entire approach has a different attitude and orientation. There is a detectable difference in how things feel and look.

3. And to respond to the final part of the criticism, that “job seekers do need to sell themselves” I would say - what evidence do we have of that? Over a decade spent with job seekers, I’ve seen an awful lot of evidence that selling gets in the way of success for many a dedicated and otherwise skilled job seeker.

Really, is there any “just semantics“? Language is so important - when we start by changing our language we can open up a whole new way of thinking and behaving - and of creating a life (and a job search approach) more in line with how we want to live.

Authenticity, Criticisms/questions, Integrity, Job search as sales & marketing